I did not let them read the Song of Roland. Not yet. They are thirteen. They are learning to tell history from story. We read the Mabinogion, the lais of Marie de France, and Chrétien de Troyes. Rich. Complex. Important. But the Song of Roland is different. It is a later chanson de geste that reshapes a modest historical episode into myth.
Instead of the poem, we examined the historical accounts that inspired it. We read the Royal Frankish Annals and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne to establish contemporaneous facts: in 778 a Frankish rearguard was ambushed in the Pyrenees during Charlemagne’s retreat from Spain. The attackers were local Basque fighters. The sources record a defeat and loss, not a glorious martyrdom against Saracen armies.
Then we traced how storytelling changed facts. By the eleventh century the Song of Roland recasts Basques as Saracens, invents Ganelon’s treachery as motive, amplifies Roland’s heroism, and adds the famous oliphant blast. These changes served cultural and political aims: to unify Christian identity, to celebrate martial virtue, and to support crusading rhetoric. They also produce common misattributions: claiming the historical Charlemagne personally led a crusade or that Roland’s death proved a fight against Islam.
I insisted the student practice source criticism. Compare date, genre, and audience. Ask: who benefits from the change? Where did details appear first? Reject lazy retellings that mix myth and fact.
Result: the student can narrate the 778 event accurately and explain how and why the Song of Roland transformed it. We will read the poem later — as literature, not as literal history.
This disciplined approach trains their mind to demand evidence, to separate moral exemplars from factual record, and to resist the comforting lies of myth when studying the past. Good habits now, lifelong rigor later. Keep going, always.